The Dish on Pinterest - Part One

So far, my only foray in to actually attempting some of my pins from Pinterest has been trying out some of the various recipes I've pinned. My food board has exactly 100 pins right now, so it clearly has the most pins of any of my boards, by far.

In no specific order, here are some of the main dish recipes I've tried thus far and opinions on the varying results:

Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken

Source: millerfamilyorganizer.blogspot.com via Lindsey on Pinterest

This recipe gets five stars for simplicity and versatility and four stars for taste. I threw my chicken breast in the crock pot still frozen, mixed in the taco seasoning, a can of cream of chicken soup and a cup of salsa and we were off and cooking. Right before serving, shred the chicken and add half a cup of sour cream.

I served this in soft taco shells with yellow rice and black beans but the taco filling would be great for burritos, enchiladas, a chicken rice bowl (which I had for lunch today with the leftovers)...the possibilities are pretty endless.

Two thumbs up from all in our household.

Creamy Italian Chicken

Source: bosssanders.com via Sweet on Pinterest

There are about 872 pins for something called Creamy Italian Chicken, but I made it from the pin shown above. The caption on the pin was 'Holy moly this was good!' Based on that and the ingredient list which had things like cream cheese and a packet of dry Italian dressing, I had high expectations for this one. Unfortunately, they were not met. Holy moly this was NOT good.

Now, I tend to make my recipes a little healthier by using Healthy Request soups which are low fat and low sodium and using reduced fat cream cheese in recipes that call for those ingredients, so maybe that had something to do with it. That said, I do that ALL the time and I never have any problems, but we did not like this recipe. The cream cheese never really broke down in the sauce so everyone had weird clumps of cream cheese on their plates and the overall texture of the sauce was weirdly gritty. Just, ick. There are plenty of pins in the sea and I won't be re-visiting that one any time soon.

Baked Parmesan Chicken

Source: theenchantedcook.blogspot.com via Lindsey on Pinterest

The caption on this one calls it OMG Chicken. I'll give it an OMG for simplicity, but maybe just an O and an M for taste. You can't get much easier than mixing 1/4 cup parmesan cheese with 1/2 cup of sour cream, spreading it on the breasts (your chicken breasts that is, for anyone that is confused) and sprinkling on some bread crumbs before throwing it in the oven for 20 minutes or so. I'm not really sure why, but this chicken comes out super juicy and it tastes kind of similar to a chicken cordon bleu without the ham. Everyone in my house liked it and I also like that the options for what to serve this with are pretty flexible - it goes well with potatoes, rice, pasta or even just a green salad.

One interesting note about this one: the recipe I just mentioned above is in the caption of the pin but the actual pin links to a recipe that uses mayonnaise instead of sour cream. We aren't huge fans of mayo in my house, so I went with light sour cream and thought it was tasty. Feel free to mayo it up if you are so inclined.

Coming up tomorrow - Pinterest side dishes!